


Bad Habits

by fwildflowerf



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:22:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwildflowerf/pseuds/fwildflowerf
Summary: No one understands that for her, simply living has always been so freaking hard.---Set months after the last episode of season two, Hope helps Josie deal with her pain. Warning: Angst!fic. Contains mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson & Josie Saltzman, Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman, Josie Saltzman & Lizzie Saltzman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 117





	Bad Habits

**Author's Note:**

> As the warning in the summary stated, this fic contains mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts, and if this is something you will find triggering to offensive or it will cause you distress, please do not read it. 
> 
> That said I hope you enjoy this fic.

Josette Saltzman had a secret. She fought hard to keep it hidden from the prying eyes of her friends and family and other nosy students, only for it to come to life in a matter of seconds and she’s pretty sure Hope MIkaelson is the worst possible person that could have found out first. Because she’s pretty sure Hope hates her – if the way she’s been avoiding Josie like the plague after escaping the siphoner’s mind is anything to go by – , and she thinks the auburn-haired witch would have no qualms about spreading it round the school – and gossip spreads faster than the truth at the Salvatore Boarding School for the young and gifted.

A hundred pairs of eyes are burning holes in her back as she scurries away from her, concerned eyes and all, and the students are still hooked on the whole ‘Dark Josie’ drama, and it’s been months since that kicked off, so this will probably still be front-page news years into her studies – and her stomach cramps at that thought, twisting painfully into knots that she hasn’t been able to untangle for weeks now, despite all the Advil she’s been taking.

She slips into an empty classroom, bright blue eyes following her all the way – _she’s practicing secret dark spells, probably, she is even more unstable than her sister_ – and she finds she doesn’t really care; they can think what they like, to be honest, as long as it’s anything but the truth.

She can still see her, pretty mouth shaped around a gasp, eyes full of emotions, she couldn’t possibly name, but are praying are a couple of county lines away from a burning desire to find the nearest whoever and gush about how Josie Saltzman is a secret cutter.

She can still remember her, months ago, curling long fingers around hers asking her if she – Josie Saltzman – wants her – the Hope Mikaelson – to stay, because she won’t if Josie doesn’t want her to, even though she should have been screaming at her for almost screwing her boyfriend – her _boyfriend_ , for fuck’s sake – and Josie’s stomach clenches even harder, because there’s no way the older teen is passing up on revenge this sweet.

Hope is definitely the worst person to have found out.

(Except maybe Lizzie, who would have looked at her with liquid eyes, wounded and guilt-ridden and cutting her far deeper than any knife pressed against her skin ever could.)

She sinks to the floor, back flush against the cold wood of the door messing her poorly made pony tail even more as she buries her head into her knees, refusing to let the burning in her chocolate brown eyes translate into tears, because she’s cried far too much lately, but it’s so fucking hard, because this wasn’t meant to happen.

She is not even sure what she means by _this_ exactly – her mother having to fly around the globe, looking for a (possibly inexistent) cure so that Lizzie and her won’t have to die at the mere age of 22; her biological mother being resurrected on her birthday by a crazy-eyed monster Malivore spat out, only for her to die less than twelve hours later after she’d buried Josie alive; her father’s only way of coping being alcohol making him a barely functional alcoholic that has to run a school full of kids whose lives depend on him; the numerous fights with Lizzie, who won’t even look at her, who doesn’t deserve to be broken because in Josie’s eyes she’s the kindest person she’s ever known, but now is because Josie herself has been a selfish whore and chose power over family; having to see Landon, whom at one point thought she was falling for, every day because he couldn’t fucking control himself and had to steal a knife (that brought more hurt and death than fucking Klaus Mikaelson did in his days as a ruthless king) that attracts monster after monster.

And it just so happens that she’s working on finding the current monster’s weakness with Hope who grabbed Josie’s arm as she was walking away to ask about information or something, and the brunette winced in pain and then horror as her hand shifted and her oversized wool sweater rode up the tiniest bit and Hope’s baby blue eyes caught the cross-hatched skin of her forearm, red, angry slashes that criss-cross like shoelaces all the way up to her elbow, and then her eyes were wide and looking at Josie and scalding her skin and fucking hell, she had to get away –

And now Hope knows, and Josie has no idea what to do.

Somehow by a miracle she manages to avoid the Mikaelson heiress for the rest of the day, begging off on extra work – she kind of loves Dorian – and heads to the Cafeteria, not before making a pit stop at her father’s office and gulping down the first bottle of alcohol she could get her hands on and yet she is still not drunk enough.

She sits down at a table with Rafael, Jade, MG, Kaleb and Lizzie – who steadfastly ignores every smile or attempt at conversation Josie throws her way, not that she blames her for it – and waits for Landon and – sadly – Hope to make an appearance. Her shirt sleeves are carefully smoothed past the knuckles of her fingers not wanting a repeat of the morning.

She desperately tries to keep up with what they are saying – something about homework and monsters – as her buzzed mind can’t comprehend more than the basics, while aimlessly pushing the food around her plate. She thinks in her drunken sputter that if she leaves now she’ll manage to avoid, yet again, Hope. “Jesus Jo. Satan really got to you today, huh?”

She almost spits the beverage all over Lizzie, but somehow manages to swallow it, despite the way her heart is chocking her throat, and how the hell does Jade know about this? Has Hope really spread it around that fast?

She ignores her sister’s indignant cry as she jumps in defending Hope and Josie suppresses the urge to roll her eyes: what happened to blood is thicker than water? Jade has never been a big fan of the tribrid, and Josie knows it’s because the older vampire has a crush on her and for some reason sees Hope as competition. Also, that one kiss they had shared – a sleep-deprived mistake, really – doesn’t help.

“What?” she stutters, coughing a little, tugging her sleeves tighter.

“It’s got to suck working with her all day. And there’s the fact that the monster is after your ex-boyfriend who’s her current boyfriend.” Jade pauses, looking thoughtful while deliberately ignoring Lizzie’s glare and the awkwardness of it all, before taking a sip of her blood bag. “Between the ‘Dark Josie’ episode, Landon revealing his undying love for Hope while being in a relationship with you and all the dark and twisty family drama, frankly I’m surprised you’re not suicidal.”

She forces herself to roll her eyes and say she doesn’t even know what, tossing back the rest of the liquid that she’d spelled to look like water and not smell of alcohol, with every intention to head back to Alaric’s office and swipe another bottle, because she’s not suicidal, she’s not! And the burning desire, that’s unsettling her stomach, to slip into a bathroom stall and fish the pocketknife from her bag to draw long, deep lines in her skin just to forget this whole fucking day does not make her anything like a suicidal person.

MG seems to read a little too much into her non-answer and hasty drinking, and he looks at her a little uneasily, and even Lizzie has some sort of semi-concerned face thing going on, which is a true testament to how telling she’s been, and she scrambles to answer before a slew of questions can follow.

“Hope isn’t as bad as you draw her to be” she mumbles (because, really, she isn’t) “and Landon is actually trying to be kind of...nice and...less awkward” she adds (because he is), steadfastly letting out the part about how seeing her ex-boyfriend whisper sweet nothing’s in Hope’s ear, looking at her as if she is his whole world and leaving kisses on her pretty pink lips – being reminded of how he abandoned her like she was nothing with a shitty speech about how she deserved better only to jump into Hope’s arms the very next second, because she was so defective – makes her feel so viciously ill that whenever she’s collapsed on the bathroom floor with a knife clenched tightly in her fist, she has to deliberately not think about how everyone abandons her for someone better or she knows she’ll go too far.

MG seems to accept this answer, and he smiles encouragingly “That’s great, Josie! I think it’ll be good for you to rekindle your relationship with both of them, I know Hope’s dying to.” And fuck now she feels bad.

Josie smiles tightly, murmuring her assent even as her fingers itch for another bottle of tequila; she can feel Lizzie’s eyes on her, and has to bite her lip hard to avoid her gaze, because she knows that Josie’s definitely not fine. Lizzie saw her sister’s near breakdown in the middle of the halls a few days after she’d hidden her magic in a coin and minutes after it was revealed that Hope finally woke up. And Josie for the first time ever is actually infinitely glad that Lizzie’s not speaking to her because it means that after several attempts at gauging what the problem is, she gives up and goes back to eating her salad.

“I still think she’s Satan’s whore.” Jade smirks and Josie glares at her, biting her tongue in order to keep from saying something she’ll later regret, because even though she’s not Hope’s biggest fan right now, no one – and she means no one – is allowed to speak of Hope like that.

Her sister though has no problem in unleashing her inner bitch on Jade, who everybody knows has crossed a limit “Listen here you dodohead, one more pass at Hope and I’ll make your life here so miserable that you’ll wish you never escaped that prison world in the first place. In case you’ve forgotten I am the principal’s daughter.”

She stifles a laugh but let’s a small smile appear on her lips and if she looks around, she can see everybody’s eyes shining with amusement. But then everyone freezes, and Kaleb coughs uncomfortably, and Jade pales in a way that would be comical if it didn’t signify what Josie thinks it signifies, and she can feel that heat again, burning slowly at her shoulder and she suddenly regrets wearing her favourite wool sweater.

“Josie” It’s spoken softly, like she’s afraid Josie might bolt – and she’s not too far off the mark, if Josie’s being honest – and her heart kicks hollowly against her ribs afraid of what Hope will say next. “A word, please.”

Everyone’s looking at them – literally, every single person in the cafeteria has stopped what they were doing to watch what’s about to happen, a showdown between the school’s resident hero and the once-villain-now-turned-powerless-witch – and Josie really, really doesn’t want to talk to Hope but it doesn’t seem like she’d told anyone yet, and maybe she can stop her if Josie begs and pleads and offers months of doing her homework and general slavery. “Sure” she manages to get out, sliding out of her sit and moving towards the exit, because there’s no way Hope’s publicly humiliating her in front of every student, and she feels the need for some sort of control.

The moment the doors close behind them, Hope wraps her hand around Josie’s shoulder and spins the brunette round to face her, surprisingly warm fingers tilting her chin up so that she can’t help but look into those damned blue eyes.

She’s crying. Josie’s never seen Hope cry before.

It doesn’t really mesh with what the brunette knows about her, so she’s completely caught off-guard when Hope opens her mouth and her normally steady and sure voice is shaky and broken.

“What are you doing, Josie?”

She avoids, because after all it’s what she does best “I’m sorry Hope. I really shouldn’t have let Jade talk about you like that, I was just – ”

Hope’s eyes flash golden, and she sneaks a hand out to curl around Josie’s left wrist, turning it outwards and pushing her shirt up the elbow in one smooth movement; the frigid air and the pressure of her fingers makes the cuts on her forearm sting sharply, and she hisses as Hope’s grip tightens when she tries to break free from her hold.

“Don’t play dumb, Josette.” She says, and the biting anger in her voice makes Josie look up in surprise, and she finds herself oddly mesmerised by the tear tracks on her cheeks, the fire in her brilliant blue eyes.

It hurts in a way Josie simply wasn’t expecting, but fuck her, because what right does Hope have to be upset about this, and why should Josie care about how she feels, and she doesn’t, honestly, she couldn’t give a crap about her pain when she herself is so blindingly consumed with her own.

“I’m not playing anything” she almost growls, twisting free of her hands and yanking her sleeves down, fervently hoping that the low baritone of her voice masks the pain spearing every syllable.

She turns to re-enter the cafeteria, but Hope grabs hold of her again and drags her away from the entrance into an empty classroom closing the blinds and locking the door, all the while ignoring the younger girl’s struggling and yelling and practically pinning her to the brick wall when Josie finally stops moving.

She’s angry and she makes sure Hope knows it “What the hell are you doing? You can’t just freaking kidnap me or whatever, let me go – ”

“You need to stop, Josie.”

She can’t quite believe Hope’s audacity, because she doesn’t know anything about it, doesn’t know anything about her and what she does or doesn’t need to be doing just to make it through the day, just to keep fucking breathing through the pain the universe seems determined to pile on her until she inevitably breaks.

Josie would tell Hope all of this if any part of her thought that she actually cared beyond her capacity as her colleague, or if they were friends, or if she didn’t still hold feelings for her boyfriend; but Hope doesn’t, and they aren’t, and Josie will always care for him, so she keeps avoiding.

“Stop doing what?”

Her eyes don’t leave Josie’s as she curls her hands tighter where they’re clasped around the brunette’s wrists, and Josie knows Hope can feel the raised flesh beneath the flimsy material of her shirt. Her fingertips gently trace the lines of inflamed skin like she’s reading braille, and Josie can’t help but wonder what it tells her, whether she’s any closer to understanding this than Josie herself is because of it.

“Cutting yourself.”

She flinches, unable to remain stoic in her anger like she’d been hoping to. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you” she spits out, and she doesn’t even realise it’s a lie until something breaks in Hope’s eyes.

Hope thinks this is her fault.

She feels sick, everything she didn’t eat today churning in her stomach along with the tequila, and she wishes she could blame the alcohol but it takes more than a bottle to make her feel sick like she’s turning upside down – one of the upsides of binge-drinking for weeks; Hope is too close, and her eyes and hands are burning Josie’s skin in a way she knows means that she’s feeling guilt, because as hard as the young dark-haired witch tries to convince herself that what she’s doing doesn’t affect anyone else, it does – and the worst part is, she’s never thought about Hope. She pictured MG’s slack jawed anxiety, and Lizzie’s hysteria, Kaleb’s silent seething and Landon’s concern, her dad’s disappointment and her mother’s turmoil.

Hope, the girl who’s lost more than anyone here, who watched both her parents die in front of her eyes, the girl who’s whole world burned down in a matter of seconds just because she wanted to see her father, the same girl who’s smile brightened the whole room , she didn’t factor into the equation, because she never thought she’d care.

But Josie’s fucked up about Landon, about Hope with Landon, to the point where blurring the line between life and death with the sharp edge of a blade is the only way she knows how to exist anymore, and there’s no fucking way that Hope being as annoyingly kind as she is, as compassionate and emphatic as she is that Josie shredding her body to pieces because she want’s what Hope has was not going to hurt the tribrid.

Hope’s breathing is slightly erratic, and fine strands of fiery hair are catching on wet eyelashes as she holds Josie’s gaze, guilt creasing her ivory skin. “I’m sorry Josie. I never meant – ” her voice catches, straining around the words. “I never meant for us to hurt you.”

Bitter laugh escapes pink, pouty lips, because this is fucking ridiculous “You’re sorry? I almost fucked your boyfriend while you were all alone in that freaking pit, not knowing if you’ll leave or not and nearly ruined your relationship, and you’re the one that’s sorry?”

“You wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for me and Landon!”

“There’s a lot of shit going on in my life besides you and Landon, Hope” she snorts, pushing a brunette strand from her face, thinking of her mother and father and her sister and her friends and how nobody in her life is who they are supposed to be.

Who they promised they would be.

Hope swallows, let’s go of one hand to wipe delicately at her eyes “But we’re part of it. And I’m still sorry.”

And now she wants to scream, because Hope shouldn’t be apologising, because she didn’t do anything wrong. This is on Landon – Landon fucked her over, fucked everyone, really, broke her apart and what little he left her with, her father shattered with sharp secrets and caustic lies, because he just wasn’t satisfied with the damage he inflicted when he didn’t tell them they won’t live past twenty two.

The people who are supposed to love her keep hurting her, and Hope, who has every right to want to hurt her, is the only one who never has, is the only one who is sorry, and she is looking at Josie with the saddest eyes she’s ever seen, and everything is just so inexplicably wrong that the brunettes is finding it hard to breath.

“Josie, please” she says, voice somehow simultaneously hard and wavering. “You have to stop. This isn’t healthy, you’re smart, you know that it’s wrong. And you think that you have it under control, but someday you are going to slip up, and you’ll cut too deep, and even if you manage to survive, they – your friends, your family – won’t.”

Hope takes a deep breath, brings a hand to Josie’s face to clear it of tears she didn’t even realise she had been crying, and with a voice that is a hairs breadth from breaking, says “And I can’t be this person. I can’t be someone who is responsible for causing so much pain that you have to make yourself bleed to withstand it, and I know that that is selfish, but I can’t help it, and you know that Landon would feel the same. Josie this would kill everybody-”

Josie shakes her head, because that’s a lie, and try as she might to remain angry and indignant and self-righteous about it being her own life she’s throwing away, guilt is pooling into every crevice of her body in a steady stream, and the slow-building pressure is threatening to destroy her. She can’t be here listening to Hope’s pleas and warnings and good intentions, because it makes everything hurt that much worse: she knows she’s on the blink of breaking down, and up until now, the inevitability had been almost comforting.

The young with could not understand what did all her emotional pain matter when she was so close to dying? So close to slitting an artery, or swallowing her sister’s prescriptions, or pulling the trigger? And she was so damn careful of not thinking about the mess she’d be leaving behind that continuing to exist even with this ending in sight was a plausible possibility, but Hope’s words and hands and tears and heartbreak are pulling apart the threads of her guiltless apathy and she is unravelling too fast to process and prevent the impulse that drives her to kiss Hope just to make her shut up.

Josie kisses her as hard and fast as she knows how, silencing the other girl with her tongue against her teeth. Hope’s lips are immobile with shock beneath Josie’s, and the brunette grins as she forces Hope’s mouth open and slips inside, because she’s finally back on solid ground.

Hope’s lips give under the hard press of Josie’s mouth to hers, and there’s a sharp intake of breath when the taller of two bites down and traps her between her teeth. This is how Josie communicates, through a thick haze of heat and lust and sex: she wants to make Hope feel it, how much she hurts, how stopping isn’t an option because the shedding of blood is all that is preventing the pain of simply living from overwhelming her. It’s about survival, and it gets that little bit easier as Hope’s words die in her throat and the guilt dissipates and Josie can breathe again.

But then Hope slams against Josie, slants her mouth over hers and sucks the oxygen from the siphoner’s lungs until Josie feels like her chest is going to explode; Hope’s tongue burns hers with anger, and her disappointment and resentment and anguish taste like ashes in the brunette’s throat. Fists coil around injured wrists like metal snakes so tightly that Josie feels her skin split open and blood slide over the curve of her thumb, collecting in her hands; and it hurts, it does, it burns and stings and feels like fire in her veins but it’s not the kind of pain that helps her because the blood that’s hot and slick on her finger feels just like Hope’s tears cutting across her face, and Hope is still kissing her so hard it hurts and everything is so fucking wrong that the dark-haired teen breaks apart beneath Hope’s hands.

It’s an undoing that is not of her own making, and these fractures run far deeper than any of her open wounds. It’s backlash, her self-inflicted pain rippling through the lives of those who love her, carving jagged lines and sharpening edges until they are mirror images of her desolation, and all at her own hand.

She cannot stand for another second to feel the hurt she’s caused Hope in her assault against her mouth, and she tears away from the tribrid and everything Josie never wanted to be; there is pain in everything she does, whether she is breathing or not, and she has no idea which path holds darker consequences.

Something has got to give.

Later, after she’s left Hope collapsed and crying on the cold ground, of that one empty classroom, and taken refuge on her bathroom floor, Josie tries to write a letter.

The fountain pen lies parallel to a rusting pocketknife on the tile, white office paper adjacent to the left. Her arms are bare, bloodied sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and the glazed slashes in her skin are as angry and open as when she first made them all those weeks ago, slowly leaking blood like a dripping faucet. It’s reminding her far too much of Hope, and she welcomes the relief when the tears come, blinding her to the sight of her self destruction.

(The destruction of the people she has come to call family.)

She is being a coward, and she knows it, but this has been a long time coming and she does not want to be here to see the wreckage when they learn of her masochism, not when the only person she wanted to hurt was herself. She knows this will hurt a thousand times more than any of her previous indiscretions, but pain is pain, and hers is relentless and suffocating and she finds it hard to breathe under the force of its onslaught and she is a selfish enough person to finally put an end to this.

(To her.)

Words have never been her strong suit – she’d left that to Lizzie – she was an observer, but she spent a long tome deliberating her decision, because this is important. She owes it to her friends and family to explain what she’s about to do, to assure them that it isn’t their fault and they couldn’t have stopped her. They deserve to have peace of mind.

It’s only when she has been sat on the bathroom floor for so long that her blood has clotted and dried that she realises she has no idea what to say.

There aren’t any words that can carry the weight of her pain or explain how she is hollow besides the achingly desperate loneliness.

They couldn’t understand that she’s abandoned and left behind than nobody has ever chosen her, so it’s an impossibility to choose herself.

They couldn’t understand that she is broken instead of nurtured, and piecing herself back together isn’t a concept she has ever been able to grasp.

They couldn’t understand that she was never taught how to not love, and because of this she’s had her heart broken way too many times to remember.

No one understands that for her, simply leaving has always been so fucking hard.

And the truth is, they never will no matter what she writes in her stupid fucking letter, because it will never make sense to them in the way she needs it to, for this to be okay. She’ll be dead, and words will sound empty and meaningless, because there is no justification that could ever make that bearable for the people she is leaving behind. She could write a thousand words, but no amount of bleeding ink will erase that kind of pain, that loss, that fucking heartbroken look on Hope’s face.

She doesn’t know how to say goodbye, and she’s starting to think it’s because she doesn’t want to.

Blinking away the tears, she curls her finger around the pen and scrawls a message to Lizzie across the pager, careful not to stain it with blood, and props it up against the bathroom mirror, where she is sure her blonde twin will see it. She drags the first aid kit out from the cabinet and starts to disinfect and bandage her arms, the strangest of sensation assaulting her when the sharp sting of antiseptic fails to make her smile.

Once finished, she collects the bloodied tissues and bandage wrappers into her arms and exists the bathroom to dispose them in the garbage.

The pocketknife isn’t far behind.

Hope opens the door to her room after the third knock, looking about as distraught as Josie feels, and it only serves to make her that little bit more certain that what she’s doing is the right thing.

“Josie” she acknowledges, with a voice as worn out as the button-down shirt she seems to be passing off as sleepwear, but the younger girl can sense her unease and surprise in the way the tribrid’s eyes shift to wide.

“Hope” she manages to get out, and watches Hope process her presence; it appears to do nothing to lessen the distrust colouring her expression like she’d hoped.

When Josie fails to elaborate, Hope asks “Is there something I can help you with?”

Josie opens and closes her mouth several times, completely at a loss of what she wants to say. She struggles for what feels like an endless moment suspended in time, as Hope continues to look at her with a queasy mix of anxiety and bewilderment, until the brunette decides to just go with her gut and move forward to kiss her.

It’s slow this time, and there is no bitting violence brimming below the surface. She slides shaky and unsure fingers along the curve of Hope’s cheekbone, and gently tilts her face towards her own. Hope remains a passive participant even as Josie runs her tongue softly against her lips until her mouth opens more fully and Josie’s tongue is a soothing pressure against her own; the Saltzman girl is sure Hope can taste the salt of her tears, and when Josie swallows a whimper, she thinks Hope understands the apology she is trying so desperately to communicate.

When Hope finally reciprocates the kiss, she does so with such warmth that Josie’s tentativeness melts away and she feels instantly safe. Hope pulls her flush against her with and arm hooked around Josie’s back, the other cradling her face, and the echo of her heartbeat vibrating through Josie’s sternum dulls the festering emptiness inside her chest a little.

Hope tastes sweet with forgiveness and understanding, and her firm grip on Josie’s body has yet to grow relax; Hope is holding her together.

Josie can feel Hope’s relief in every exhale she lets against her skin, and it strengthens the brunette’s resolve to be more than she is, more than this dried out husk of self-loathing that stems from circumstances she had no control over, and that she is slowly realising doesn’t warrant her suffering. Living hurts, but pain is relative, and it was never her intention to drag anyone else down with her; she owes it her friends and family (to herself) to make it through.

“I can’t be that person, either” she says, echoing Hope’s earlier words back to her, fixing her chocolate brown eyes away from blue ones and instead following the soft strokes of her own fingers against Hope’s collarbone “I can’t be responsible for hurting everybody this much. Not when everything is so fucked up for them already.”

Hope’s shaking in Josie’s arms, and there’s that guilt again, burrowing between the brunette’s ribs.

“I’m sorry, Hope.”

Josie can feel the end of her hair growing wet with Hope’s tears, and runs the hand that is curved around the shorter girl’s hip in slow, comforting circles to soother her of the pain Josie herself has inflicted upon her. When Hope moves out of her embrace slightly, it is to catch Josie’s eyes with her own and make a promise.

“It won’ hurt forever, Josie. Someday, things will be better.”

It’s not sugar coated bullshit about how everything is going to be bright and shiny and happily ever after; it’s honest that is founded in faith, a reminded that there can be more to life than this, if she allows it, and it is this more than anything that has her believing Hope’s words despite herself. Josie almost kisses her again, but that’s not what this is about, and it doesn’t mesh with the fresh start she is so haphazardly trying to piece together.

Instead, she smiles at Hope ass genuinely as she knows ho, and the way Hope’s lips curve in response sparks something inside Josie that’s been missing for longer than she cares to remember.

It’s not salvation, but Josie thinks it might be the closest to healing she has ever been.


End file.
